3 ways to make your business slicker

Do you want your business to become slicker and more efficient? Are you looking for ways to get more from less?

In this article we look at what industry disruptors have done to shake up their sectors and grow rapidly, and what you can practically do to help you adapt and deliver a better customer experience.

Time to adapt

It was Charles Darwin who recognised that it is not the most intelligent, nor the strongest of the species that survives, but the one that is the most responsive to change, and this is also true for business.

There are now what are called ‘Disruptors’ who are entering into many different industries and have completely changed the way that business is done in those sectors.

Companies like Airbnb, who are the largest provider of accommodation yet don’t own a single facility and Uber, the largest provider of transportation and don’t own a single vehicle, who have become hugely successful brands by rethinking how business should be done. Fintech companies like Monzo and Starling bank have revolutionised the banking landscape. In just two and half years, Monzo grew a customer base of over 2 million.

How have they achieved this?
Rather than putting the business first, they have put the customer first instead. They looked at the friction and obstacles that exist for people and sought to remove or minimise them as much as possible.

Whilst these disruptors started business this way, the giant that is Amazon is a story of adaptation.

Amazon have completely changed the way we shop, not only have they evolved from the online book retailer to become a seller of literally almost everything. They have also changed the way they manage and fulfil orders, so for example rather than holding physical book stocks, they can print copies on demand, plus they have opened up their online marketplace to retailers around the globe who can sell via the Amazon platform.

What do all these businesses have in common?

They have considered their processes from a user experience perspective. So, rather than thinking about what is the easiest or best way for the company, they have thought ‘what do customers want?’, ’ What will make their lives easier or better?’, ‘What will make their customer journey more efficient?’

In order to become a slicker business, you need to consider your customers’ journey when they interact with you. When they go to your website, if they have an enquiry, when they want a quote or want to place an order, you want that experience to be as smooth as possible. Each interaction with you is a touchpoint, and whenever something isn’t easy, doesn’t work as it should or there is a delay for the customer, it affects their experience. If the customer has a poor experience, you are risking time, money and your reputation.

How can you improve your customer experience? 

1. Review your processes

As businesses grow, they can get lazy. Are the processes that were in place and worked for the first few customers still in place for the subsequent customers years later? You may be getting busier, but does that mean you increase staff to manage the increase in volume, or actually look at new ways to manage the heightened demand, for example looking at the automation of certain processes?

One of the tools we use with clients is the Critical Value Window (see below).

Choose one of your important business processes, for example when a customer places an order. Go through each step of that journey to complete that process. For each step in the process decide if that step is actually business critical and whether it really adds value to the customer.  This is a good way to challenge the ‘we have always done it this way’ thinking. If a step isn’t business critical and doesn’t add value, you’ve got to seriously consider why you are wasting valuable resources on it.

What would happen if you stopped doing that part of the process? Of course there may be some processes that are required for compliance reasons or for ISO standards, so whilst they may not add value to the customer, they are still business critical.

Remember, it isn’t necessarily about removing interactions, in fact you might decide to add more interactions with customers which provide value and give the personal touch.

 2. Look at marginal gains

This is all about making small changes that add up. For example, when you remove an unnecessary part of a process, which might for example save 15 minutes per order, for every 10 orders that’s two and a half hours saved. When you start thinking about one hundred orders, that time saved per order really starts to stack up big, saving you 25 hours (more than 3 working days).

Where in your business can you make more small changes to add up to bigger gains?

Check out our blog article ‘How to gain 25 working days back a year‘.

3. Better Never Stops

This is about constantly reviewing your business and creating a culture of continuous improvement. Imagine if everybody came to into work each day trying to create a better experience for your customers and tried to make their job more efficient for your business. Contact us if you want to learn more about this.

How powerful that would be if your organisation?

If you would like to find out more about how to practically implement these changes in your business, we are here to help. Our 1-2-1 business advice programmes can take you step-by-step through how to take your company to the next level.

We also have a range of free tools and resources, including our weekly podcast and Love Your Business.TV episodes on YouTube.

Don’t forget you can also request a free paperback copy of the book ‘How to fall back in love with your business’, we just ask that you pay £4.75 P&P.

Finally, at Better Never Stops, we are on our own mission to help inspire ambitious people to live extraordinary lives. So whenever someone listens to our podcast or watches and episode of Love Your Business.TV, we provide a day’s worth of literacy and business training to entrepreneurs in Uganda. So far this year we have provided an amazing 676 days training. Help us spread the word, please follow Better Never Stops on LinkedIn or connect with me, Adrian Peck, personally on Linkedin